Saturday Nov. 23rd

Today peace and justice groups from the Northern Illinois area met in St. Charles to explore networking possibilities around the urgency of the present war situation. The group consensed to keep the focus of their work on their local peace groups rather than put all efforts into one large organizational conglomerate. It was recognized that we do share a level of community and we should foster it in a healthy and beneficial way. Concretely, the following steps were taken;
1. A listserve is being set up to help us communicate easier in organizing against the war, be it correlating actions, or seeking speakers, advice, and other resources
2. A phone tree is also being set up for more urgent issues, or if the internet listserve breaks down. As with the listserve, there are liasons from each local group who channel information between the inner circle and their own outer circle.
*A Spring Retreat is being hosted by Rockford Peace and Justice. One of the Rockford people took feedback on what we would like to do. Tentatively a morning speaker on organizing will be followed by a Skills Share session. The afternoon would focus on organizing between the groups present. A good idea was suggested that we ought to do an action, as we would already have a sizeable group together. The Spring Peace Retreat will happen around March.
Other things discussed were solidarity plans for Dec. 7th and 8th. While there will be mass actions in Chicago, most present felt a lot of people in our communities would not have the schedules to make the drive, and that staging a local presence was just as important. These thoughts extended to our Escalation Responses. Most groups voiced plans for rallies and pickets. In DeKalb, home of Northern Illinois University, the Northern Coalition for Peace and Justice (there are some non-apathetic students!) will stage a walk out and meet up with the DeKalb Interfaith Network downtown for an extended rally with speakers, updates and hopefully some musicians. Some of the Fox Valley groups decided to get together in Geneva in order to form a more sizeable number of folks.
Groups present included Rockford Peace and Justice, Fox Valley Citizens for Peace, DuPage Peace and Justice Coalition. Also present was West Chicago High School student Brad Remus, who said he has received much support in the school, as well as from the administration. There were also two students from Illinois Math and Science Academy who are just getting involved but have had success with petitions. Other groups expressed support in providing rides to IMSA student to rallies and such. While this was not a Chicago-focused groups, several Chicago folks were present and it was aknowledged that though we are not Chicago, we all have relationships with folks in the city and we won't ignore that.
If there are groups that would like to network with Northern Illinois Confederation of Peace Groups please write me and we'll get connected. Also, I hope that this helps to give Chicago folks a sense of what's happening out here in the cornfields. Visitors are welcome!

P.S. Our host Joy made
an awesome lentil soup,
thank you